LITMIR.BIZ

       foreword

      The words and ideas contained in this remarkable book by Deborah Hay mark a particular period in her creative practice, from 2000 through 2015. With ample wit and wisdom, her nuanced observations illuminate her substantial contribution to dance. Autobiographical in style, Using the Sky strikes me as Deborah Hay’s most recent self-portrait. It is like the portraiture long used by visual artists as a self-referential record of their practice, in which the evolving technique, choice of palette, scale, and materials contain volumes of information for the viewer. The words of Deborah’s “self-portrait” move continuously, and her brushstrokes are as intricate as they are wildly generous.

      Those fifteen years bracket a prolific body of choreographic creation, wherein heightened opportunity broadened the points of access to her work worldwide. The support and involvement of many artists played defining roles in propelling this trajectory, and it was a fertile period indeed. Yet as she describes it, this chapter of her work almost didn’t arrive.

      My own curatorial perspective on Deborah Hay’s work comes out of an artist-centered background. I have learned that her singular impact is far-reaching, her use of language one of her uniquely vital tools. The title of this book, Using the Sky, I interpret as an invitation.

      WHIDBEY ISLAND (SUMMER SKY)

      My first encounter with Deborah Hay was in August 1999, when I found myself in an unlikely location to meet one of the originators of Judson Church and the postmodern dance movement that was spawned throughout the downtown dance scene of New York during the 1960s and 1970s. We met on Whidbey Island, in the San Juan Island chain off the coast of Washington State. Deborah was there to run her intensive Solo Performance Commissioning Project for a predetermined number of people who had signed on as participants.

      I knew one of the participants—the Australian-based dancer and choreographer Ros Warby, whom I had worked with as an artistic director at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art—and it was through her encouragement that I began to learn about the singular Deborah Hay. Ros had invited me to see the “showing” that would happen on the final day of the project.

      Ros had made the trip from Australia in order to take part. There were many other dancers/movers/performers who similarly came from far off, like Deborah herself. I pulled into the gravel parking area of the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, thinking: “Of all the places to hold a dance intensive, how on earth did she pick this one?” This is a place in the Pacific Northwest known mainly for its military base, crab fishing, timber, and rain.

      Sitting inconspicuously on the floor, I was among a group of twenty-plus people in their comfortable layers and bare feet, one of the only people watching. The full majority were involved in doing. Deborah was readying them in a warm-up while offering what seemed to me unusual and random instructions. Not being familiar with her working process, I could not make sense of the words that the performers embraced with head nods and full absorption. Hay walked over to welcome me and handed me a short printed program. They would all be performing their solo adaptation of a work entitled Fire.

      Not only had the performers traveled some distance to arrive at this moment, they came from vastly different performance backgrounds as well. Watching them all perform their solo adaptations simultaneously was akin to hearing numerous languages being spoken at once. I knew they were “speaking” from the same text, although the movement itself spun off into radically different results. I could not decipher what was being “said” or where to direct my attention. The experience of the work was as odd as it was captivating.

      Driving Ros Warby to the ferry terminal afterward, I asked her questions about the process I had witnessed. While there had been pattern, shape, and a rich dimensionality, I could not recognize the choreographic system underpinning Fire.

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